[This post is in response to an "An Open Letter and Appeal from Our Pastor" that Pastor Stuart published through SAA's schoolwide email delivery on May 3, 2021.]
Dear Pastor Chad Stuart,
Our Petition began very humbly and made simple, reasonable, and attainable requests. It resonated with hundreds of community members, many of whom call you pastor. We have taken care not to assume unknown facts. We have drawn reasonable and logical inferences from known or undisputed facts and policy documents. We have connected the dots as best we can with no help or clarification from CC or SAA officials. We have not resorted to unconfirmed statements by anonymous sources. We have asked important, hard, and inconvenient questions. We have sought to promote our children’s educational interests both present and future.
In your letter you marginalize 145 peaceful petitioners from the rest of the school community, declaring guilt by association using loaded and pejorative words like “defaming”, “threatening”, “intimidating” people and even “their families”. How disgraceful, divisive, and destructive. You may abhor our opinions and analyses, but you cannot point to one false allegation of fact in our writings, or any language that even remotely hints at physical harm or intimidation to anyone. You have taken peaceful petitioners of your own congregation and school family, who bear legitimate concerns and questions, and have painted them as a violent, bloodthirsty mob. You are wrong and you know it. Your letter is an act of desperation because the wrong done to Judie Rosa, which also bears your own fingerprints, can no longer be contained and quietly buried, and the undemocratic disenfranchisement of SAA stakeholders is becoming exposed for all to see. Beyond all the details, this is shameful to come from a pastor. But we do not accept your judgment and condemnation of our motives. We have an Almighty God for that – and He appreciates that which you do cannot or will not see – which is that we seek to make SAA far better for our children than it is today by a healthy growth process, even if it may involve institutional growing pains in the near term.
Lillian Hepburn-Richmond petitioned the concerns of hundreds of stakeholders. We will admit that our patience and tolerance has worn thin as our requests for transparency, truth, and answers have gone ignored not only over the past 30+ days, but years before that. Meanwhile the CC and SAA maintain their smug silence and hubris, while Judie Rosa’s reputation suffers repeated injury with each passing day. Hundreds of people feel ignored, dishonored, and disrespected by the CC and SAA. Your letter conveniently avoids that fact, even while unwittingly confirming and perpetuating it. Should we not give voice to their frustration? We shall. Shall we adopt the CC and SAA’s conspiracy of silence to spare its institutional sensibilities? We shall not.
We think this is enough to refute your letter, Pastor Stuart. But for those who wish to read a more detailed refutation, they may find our detailed line by line refutation here: Line-by-Line Refutation of Pastor Stuart's Letter
You have been the church pastor for some of us for over 6 years. We have watched with amazement, lament and pity just how impossible your job is to do with so many embedded and irreconcilable conflicts of interest to the conference hierarchy, both the royalty and unimportant folk of your congregational flock, the church board stacked with your loyal friends and allies picked with surgical precision, both the royalty and unimportant folk in the school community, the school board stacked with loyal friends and allies picked with surgical precision, the school administration, your close personal friendships with so many elites, and your personal career ambitions. Will you now stand up to the Chesapeake Conference, to SAA’s Board and administration for truth and transparency for the sake of our children and their teachers?
We do not share the contempt that you may have for us as expressed in your rant. And we are people of prayer too. So we think that some of our 145 petitioners, or of the hundreds more whose views they represent, will be at Thursday night’s event to pray together for a path forward to truth, transparency, and enduring unity. We know it can be done. Will you join us in actually making it happen?
Praying for you to do right by SAA’s children of today and tomorrow,
Lillian Hepburn-Richmond